1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an electrophotographic toner for use in forming images by electrophotography, electrostatic printing or the like and to an image forming apparatus using the electrophotographic toner.
2. Related Art
In order to stabilize charge and fixation, a variety of compounds are added to toners for use in electrophotography. For example, the basic composition of two-component type electrophotographic toners is: 80 to 90% by mass of binder resin; about 3 to 15% by mass of pigments; about 1 to 5% by mass of charge control agents; about 1 to 5% by mass of release agents, and if necessary, external additives are added for the purpose of improving fluidity or the like. Electrophotographic toners with the desired performance can be obtained by appropriately changing the composition.
Among image forming apparatuses based on electrophotography, super-high-speed printers or the like often use an α-Si photoreceptor, in terms of the relationship between long life and proper charge transfer. However, the α-Si photoreceptor can provide unstable latent images and poor surface potential retention due to its high charge-transfer rate so that it can be difficult to establish good conditions under which reproducibility of high resolution dots, background fogging and image uniformity may be simultaneously at satisfactory levels and that significant problems with fogging, reproducibility of high definition dots and the margin of long term durability of developers may occur.